This is How I Lied

 Fiction by Heather Gudenkauf

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In December of 1995 a fifteen-year-old girl called Eve was murdered in the small town of Grotto, Ohio. No killer was ever charged, although there were several suspects, and the police worked tirelessly to solve the mystery. Now, twenty-five years later, a new clue has emerged, and retired police chief O'Keefe's daughter Maggie, now a police officer herself, wants to reopen the case and find the killer. After all, Eve had been her best childhood friend. But is Maggie too close to the case to be able to investigate well?

I usually love Heather Gudenkauf's books, but this one was not as enjoyable for me. Maybe it was the fact that I didn't like a lot of the characters? My favorite person was probably Eve, and she was dead on page one.

A weird nitpicky problem I had was the setting of the "present day" being stated as June 2020. The book's publishing date was 5/12/2020, so it must have been written well before then and planned so that the "present" would really be that date when it came out. I know authors do this all the time, and that's great... unless the year you plan to release is 2020. 

Because in the real June of 2020 everyone was going Covid-crazy and nobody would have been able to reopen a cold case and walk around a bunch of public buildings investigating it. I couldn't have even walked into the public library and checked out this book in June of 2020; they were still making me call ahead, park in the designated space, and open my car trunk. Then someone in a mask could come out and deposit books into the back of my car without touching anything or getting near me. They were still Lysol-ing the books I returned and quarantining them for a few days to make sure the BOOKS weren't carrying germs. It was insane.

Anyways, I know that's a silly detail but it bugged me.

I also read recently by this author: Before She Was Found